Last Friday, TMSA held yet another Connections Seminar – in Atlanta at the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) building. While it was a smaller group than usual (20 individuals), the size of the group did not dwarf the relevance and impressiveness of discussions among marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics.

One of the primary goals of the TMSA Connections Seminars is to drive conversations and sharing of ideas among those who attend. After all, you can learn the most from your peers. Here are some of the biggest take-aways shared among this regional group in the Atlanta metro market:

By Mike Regan, Chief of Relationship Development and Co-Founder of TranzAct Technologies, a company that helps shippers reduce their transportation spend while providing tools necessary to make better business decisions. Regan has spoken at several TMSA events in the past and is considered a "thought leader" in the industry.

Over the past four weeks, numerous transportation, logistics and supply chain professionals have contacted me and asked for something they can pass along to their C-Level executives to explain the Perfect Storm that has hit the trucking industry. One e-mail particularly affected me: “Mike, I need some help. Our freight numbers are awful and we’re experiencing some carrier issues that are affecting some very important customers. I’m concerned that since some of our “higher ups” don’t understand what is happening with freight, they will begin wondering whether we’re doing a good job. Help me help them understand the impact of the Perfect Storm.”

A customer relationship management (CRM) system can give your business both a look forward and backward, and be the centralized hub for customer information. While you understand the reasons you need to use CRM software, you may struggle with getting the most from the solution.

How has SMC³ built its solid business and reputation as an industry leader? In part, through its two annual conferences, including Jump Start which takes place every January. Like many other companies, SMC³ uses events as a strategy to drive business and value to the industry. Here’s a highlight of its success in 2017, which earned a TMSA Compass Award last year. The SMC³ 2018 Jump Start Conference just concluded this week, and we’ve already been hearing good reviews! Visit www.SMC3.com for more details.

If you’ve been in the transportation industry for any amount of time, you’re likely aware of SMC³ - an industry leader that is a hub of expertise in the LTL arena. In fact, more than 5,000 North American supply chain companies rely its suite of products.

One of the most common question asked of any marketing team after exhibiting at a trade show is, “What is our return on investment (ROI)?” The answer to this question is integral in determining if a show strategy was successful, and can affect your allocated budget for shows moving forward. As you can see in the data below, collected by The Exhibit Survey from 2010-2015, over 80% of show attendees have buying power. Therefore, it is important to have a sound strategy to reach those attendees and increase revenue. Many of our clients come to us, asking if there is any magical tool out there that easily calculates ROI from a trade show, and while there are many tools and technology that can help, there is no one-step solution. Calculating your ROI requires a sound strategy and consistency.

While there are other objectives to a successful trade show, such as brand awareness and product launches, we are only going to focus on the shows you identify as your best lead and revenue generating shows. Much of the data around brand awareness can be tracked by social media interaction and impressions. From our experience, there are three main categories that are critical to calculating ROI. They are;

By Keith Biondo, Publisher, Inbound Logistics magazine, an Affiliate member, 2017 sponsor and “Media Friend” of TMSA. Given the recent emerging trend and focus on CX and “the Buyer’s Journey” within the TMSA community, Biondo’s perspectives are highly relevant.

Whether your customer is the end consumer or B2B buyer, supply chain and customer service performance expectations are converging. Providing an excellent customer experience (CX) requires super-expedited and sometimes free delivery. E-commerce customers increasingly choose to pay for same-day delivery, according to a DHL survey. Here at Inbound Logistics, we call that supply chain impatience and it is spreading to B2B.

Now that you have a new marketing budget, in many cases the challenge remains: You may not have more budget to accomplish what you did last year, yet expectations for more tangible business results have increased.

In fact, according to the 2017 TMSA Sales & Marketing Study, less than 50% saw increases in their marketing budgets last year.(Download an Executive Summary). It’ll be interesting to see if there are any emerging trends or shifts when it comes to budgets in in 2018.

Seeing what others are successfully doing in sales, marketing and communications. Better understanding emerging trends in transportation and logistics, and translating that to solid market intelligence. These are just a few of the benefits to being a TMSA member – and you have access to all this and more. To help you sort through some things you may have missed in the past 12 months, TMSA has gathered some of the top articles in its blog. Take 30 minutes to read through this list and become better equipped to bring value to your organization in 2018:

7 Reasons Budget Meetings Aren’t Strategic. Just by the nature of the subject and process, budget meetings aren’t typically strategic. TMSA shared how all contribute to making the process non-strategic and sometimes even counter-intuitive to being directly tied to the business strategy – and what you can do to change it. > More

In recent conversations with TMSA members, there appears to be some emerging marketing trends that could have a growing impact on how marketing organizations in transportation and logistics collaborate, communicate, innovate and evolve. Specifically when it comes to digital marketing. Today we live in a fast-paced world where the rules of customer engagement and sales/marketing/lead gen strategies change on a daily basis. One minute you believed you've nailed the YouTube algorithm and suddenly the next you're pulling out your hair because your stellar content no longer is getting adequate views.

Part 2 of a 3-Part Series: Recap of the TMSA Connections Seminar in Kansas City. Nearly 30 marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics registered to attend the TMSA Connections Seminar, held last month at YRC Worldwide headquarters in Kansas City. One of the topics the group focused on was how to develop buyer personas to ultimately understand your target market.

Just by the nature of the subject and process, budget meetings aren’t typically strategic. These 10 reasons all contribute to making the process non-strategic and sometimes even counter-intuitive to being directly tied to the business strategy:

1. Perhaps one of the biggest issues is that budget meetings oftentimes are not integrated with the processes of strategic planning and business strategy. To add to the problem, meetings that are focused primarily on budget-setting solve for numbers and do not solve for business results. Also the length of budget meetings isn’t matched to the strategic complexity or importance of the area.

The final installment of a 3-Part Series: Recap of the TMSA Connections Seminar in Kansas City. Nearly 30 marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics registered to attend the TMSA Connections Seminar, held last month at YRC Worldwide headquarters in Kansas City. Matt Ferguson, Service Marketing Manager with this leading transporter of industrial, commercial, and retail goods in LTL shipping solutions, shared a recent story at the TMSA Connections Seminar.

Have you ever found yourself with a business opportunity for your company, yet you had but a small time-frame to seize on it? It’s a common occurrence in the world of today’s marketing department - and the team at YRC Freight can relate.

In transportation and logistics, all too often the value of a company's service or product is minimized - and what they offer their customers is "commoditized." How often have you heard a sales executive blame commoditization for failing to deliver a sale or new block of business? Sometimes this can be a convenient excuse, but in many instances it's a valid point because the company's business model has fallen into that trap.

Part 1 of a 3-Part Series: Recap of the TMSA Connections Seminar in Kansas City

Some of the key buzzwords in marketing these days are “firmographic targets” and “buyer persona.” But some suggest these new buzzwords or catch phrases are really sexy (and more sophisticated) ways to describe what smart marketing and sales professionals have been doing for years: Intelligently establishing your target markets with laser precision.

There’s no question that roles in the transportation industry historically have been predominantly male. Men would be in primary buying roles in traffic management, logistics, and supply chain. And on the provider side of the equation, men would by in key leadership, operations, and sales and business development roles. And only a small handful of females were professional over-the-road drivers.

But times are changing dramatically, thanks in part to the Women In Trucking Association (WIT), which is a TMSA member. Last week, more than 500 professionals in transportation attended the 2017 Accelerate! Conference & Expo in Kansas City, which was hosted by WIT. The Transportation Marketing & Sales Association helped to manage the Marketing & Sales Education Track, and one topic was heavily focused on: How sales and business development professionals who are women can succeed in what is still a male-dominated industry.

This is the third article in a series on how marketing automation can help you business grow and thrive. Guest author is Jill Schmieg, founder and chief strategist at Sol de Naples Marketing, a marketing services firm specializing in helping B2B companies find brighter ways to reach their markets. Learn more at www.soldenaples.com.

With more than half of B2B marketers using some form of marketing automation, it is astonishing that 85% of them feel they’re not using it to its fullest potential. (Source: EmailMonday and SiriusDecisions)

Over the course of 2 sessions totaling more than 20 marketers in transportation and logistics at last June’s TMSA Conference, four key themes about marketing automation emerged. They were voiced as: